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Codex & Other Agents

Connect Orchard to Codex, ChatGPT Desktop, Craft Agents, or any other client that supports Agent Skills, so it can create reminders, check your calendar, and control your other Apple apps through natural language. Orchard’s Skill package follows the community Agent Skills convention, so any local agent that reads from ~/.agents/skills/ (or accepts a .skill import) can use it. Support varies by client; this page is explicit about what is and is not built in.

Codex

Codex reads the shared Agent Skills path directly, so the same Local Agents install in Orchard covers it.

  1. Open Orchard from the menu bar and sign in if you have not already.
  2. Continue to the Use Orchard with Skills step in onboarding, or open the app integrations list and find the Local Agents row.
  3. Click Install. Orchard writes the Skill package to all three local-agent paths at once: ~/.agents/skills/orchard (the primary path Codex and other generic agents read), ~/.claude/skills/orchard (Claude Code’s personal Skill location), and ~/.codex/skills/orchard (a compatibility path for older Codex setups that look there instead).
  4. Restart any running Codex session so it rescans its Skills directories.

One install covers Claude Code too

This is the same button described in Connect Claude Code: Orchard installs to all local-agent paths together, since they share one package.

Manual install

For any agent that supports the Agent Skills convention but is not covered by Orchard’s built-in installer, install the package directly from its repository:

Terminal
npx skills add okooo5km/Skills4U --skill orchard -g

This places the Skill in the standard ~/.agents/skills/orchard location. Point your agent’s configuration at that directory if it does not scan it by default.

ChatGPT Desktop and Craft Agents

Orchard does not have a dedicated installer for ChatGPT Desktop or Craft Agents; there is no button in the Orchard panel that targets them specifically. Whether they can use Orchard depends entirely on the client’s own support for one of these:

  • The generic Agent Skills directory (~/.agents/skills/): if the client scans this path, the Local Agents install above already covers it, no extra step needed.
  • Manual Skill installation via npx skills add: if the client lets you point it at a local Skill folder or import a .skill package, use the manual install command above and configure the client to load from that path.

Check client support first

If ChatGPT Desktop or Craft Agents doesn’t yet support the Agent Skills convention, connect through MCP instead: any MCP-compatible client can use orchard mcp regardless of Skill support.

Verify it worked

  1. Restart the agent after installing or updating.
  2. Ask it something that requires a local Apple app, for example: “What’s on my calendar today?”
  3. The agent should call the Orchard Skill and come back with a real answer. Orchard.app must be running for the call to succeed.

Tips

  • Orchard.app must stay running whenever these agents call Orchard tools. The Skill path does not auto-launch the app the way orchard mcp does.
  • Free accounts can install and use the Skill; calling a Pro-only tool returns an upgrade message instead of running. See Free vs Pro.
  • If a client supports both Skills and MCP, prefer the Skill: it ships richer usage guidance than the MCP prompts/resources fallback in Connect via MCP.